Beyond the Pages: When writers explored Nigeria’s complex social realities at LABAF 2024
By Godwin Okondo
THE Lagos Book and Art Festival 2024 ended over a week ago, but not without providing a platform for Nigerian writers to explore the themes in their various books as they relate to pressing socio-political issues of the day. Three authors, whose works explore the complexities of Nigerian society, captivated audiences with insightful conversations on their books. They included Olabisi Ajakaye (If My Country Had a Jury), Wale Adeduro (Obalende) and Ejiro (LadyE.) Umukoro (Distortion).
Ajakaye’s If My Country Had a Jury presents a thought-provoking exploration of Nigeria’s judicial system. By imagining a future where ordinary citizens serve as jurors (reminiscent oofthe American system), the novel invites readers to consider the potential impact of popular opinion on legal decisions. Adeduro’s Obalende offers a poignant portrayal of life in Nigeria during the military era, highlighting the experiences of individuals caught in the crossfire of political turmoil while Umukoro’s Distortion delves into the darker side of Nigerian society, as it exposes issues such as child trafficking, rape, and the lingering effects of historical injustices.
While giving a brief description of his book, Ajakaye said, “what influences our judgement? Is it sentiment, religion, tribe or ethnicity? I thought about it. Often times, we blame the judge when they deliver a verdict that is contrary to what we expect. So I asked the question: what if judgement were in the hands of the people? Will we judge any better? If Nigeria had a jury (system), would our judiciary be better than it is today? When there are cases of rape, the victims do not come out because they are often traumatized and even victimized all over. Now, if we are to handle a rape case with a jury to make a decision, would it be any better? Now, that is precisely what this book is about. Twelve regular persons are called by a state to adjudicate a case, but this time around, considering Nigeria’s diverse ethnicity, people from different backgrounds (are called) to adjudicate this case; it’s about how they went about it.
“It makes you, the reader, ask yourself the question: would you do any better if you were called to make a decision on a rape case, or any other case whatsoever, and if you were to serve as a juror, would you do any better? And what exactly would influence your judgement? Is it evidence, sentiment, religion or whatsoever? That’s what the book is about.”
For Adeduro, “Obalende is a project to assist us to succeed. When Mr. Jahman Anikulapo was appointed as the Arts Editor at The Guardian, we needed to do one or two things differently, and he said I must do something. In thinking of what to do, after a few days if research, I thought we should do something about Nigeria, because there were a lot of things happening in those days. Among the few things I did was that I read Ake by Professor Wole Soyinka and Just Before Dawn by Kole Omotosho. I think these are basically commentaries about Nigeria but situated in different locations. Soyinka was born in Abeokuta and he wrote Ake. I was born in Obalende, so I decided to situate the story around Obalende. It was basically a social commentary on the political development, shortly before civil rule, and I was privileged to be born at the time of military rule, so there were so many stories we grew up with. I used one or two characters to tell a story about Nigeria from the viewpoint of a young girl who was a victim of the system.”
“Obalende is the story of a young girl called Affiong, who was born in Obalende and all the developments happening while growing up. The two major characters are Affiong and her mother, and the silent character, Affiong’s father. It is a typical Obalende setting— one you call face-me-I-face-you apartment. All the happenings in that house basically reflect other people in society. There are many things happening; violence, election issues, but it started with the military coup.
“It’s just a trauma that a young girl growing up in Nigeria in the late 1980s to 1990s, and everything happening out there also affecting the young girl. For example, whenever there was a coup, because they live next door to the barracks, the gunshots would be heard. There were cases where some people were killed by stray bullets. Those are some of the trauma she went through. People would be running for their lives during the day and while eating suya at night.
“All those rollercoaster of events happened, Christmas was a big deal, and Easter. It’s the Obalende setting that I grew up in that I capture in the book, a place where you didn’t have burglary proofs in your house and nobody locked doors. It was that safe, but as things progressed, these young girls would join everybody around, eating and partying from house to house. She became HIV positive. Talking about stigma, the mother couldn’t challenge anybody because it was a rape case. Brother Gbenro denied being responsible, and the mother, because of the shame, wanted her to do an abortion, and so many things happened.”
Olabisi Ajakaye (left); Mercy Timilehin Kelani; Dr. Ben Tomoloju; Wale Adeduro and Ejiro Umukoro at the Lagos Book and Art Festival 2024
On the major characters and themes his book addresses, Ajekaye said, “One of the characters is the lead lawyer, Alade, who is on the lower socio-economic class, just graduated law school. The book is futurist in nature, set in 2050; so, it imagines what Nigeria is going to be like then, with its plot also around Abuja. Alade is trying to find his footing in the legal practice. His friend, Ifeanyi did not make the bar exam, but they work together and he serves as a legal investigator. There’s also a friend called Temi, and she is the tech person, obtaining all the information online, hacking, doing everything possible to get what to tender in court as evidence. The theme is legal in nature, and it essentially looks at the judicial framework in Nigeria.”
Ajakaye also said his book explores the future set in 2050, and proffering solutions to the failing judicial system of Nigeria, “in most Nollywood movies, there are flashbacks, and I asked myself why we are always going back. What is propelling us towards the future? What is making us prepare for the future? If you go to the cinema today majority of the blockbusters are things that happened in the post-colonial times, and not much we can look forward to. So I thought about it. Why don’t we think forward this time and not reflect back? So that’s the reason why I set it in the year 2050?
“Let’s think about it. Do Nigeria’s problems have solution? I’ve thought about this several times, because if you try to bring up a solution, it is met with a lot of roadblocks. I did a lot of research of bye laws in a judicial space and I got to realize that so many times we blame judges for some controversial decisions but we don’t know that there are a lot of thing’s going on in the background. “For example, sometimes lawyers have to bribe a clerk or court staff to get a favourable date. There could be solutions, but the question is, are we ready for them? We all thought Dangote Refinery would make petrol cheaper. But ask yourself: has that solved the problem? The same applies to the judiciary. When we are ready to solve our problems, we would solve them.”
For Umukoro, it’s the tabooed subjects that excites her, topics nobody wants to talk about, especially social issues confronting society, adding, “What happened was that the pandemic was a defining moment when I knew I had to write something about Nigeria. I noticed something was happening amongst us, and one of those things was the issue of fathers raping their daughters, which was so common. I did an investigative piece on that and I discovered that rape and the issue of child trafficking are prevalent, baby factories were everywhere, orphanages are not real, but child trafficking centres.
“When I discovered this was happening, and government was also involved, I knew I had to tell a story. Aside from that, I also discovered there was something that happened, which took me all the way to Port Novo. I don’t know how many people here know about the Osu caste system. It looks as if it’s buried, but it is very much alive. There was a lady who got married eventually, but not from her own place in Imo State; she had to run away to Port Novo to escape the supposed curse that was placed on her own lineage.
“Meanwhile, as at 1956, the Owele of Onitsha, Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe had passed a law that nobody is subhuman and everybody matters. Blacks are always against the idea of racism, but shockingly in Africa here, we practice something similar to racism. I thought that was a distortion. The investigation took me to a point where I had to work with National Agency for Prohibition of Trafficking in Persons (NAPTIP), that is in charge of trafficking in Nigeria, and we proceeded to remove many children from many homes where parents sometimes were actually violently assaulting them.
“Now, during the pandemic it was so bad that we couldn’t rescue so many of these children from homes where they were being battered. In the whole of Nigeria, there are only eight chapters of NAPTIP in eight states, where people who are oppressed in homes can escape to. During the pandemic, people asked if the children had the virus, so nobody wanted to be close to child who might have viruses, and that was what led to the book. I began to document every form of distortion I noticed – the caste system, the orphanages, cryptic pregnancy, and all the forms.”
Part journalistic investigation, part fiction, Umukoro said she reached deep into her journalistic resources in writing Distortion, so as to unearth some hidden truths that society would rather gloss over. She further stated that the trauma that some members of society suffer from result in mental health for which such ones are shamed by society’s callousness.
“What I did which is outstanding, in a manner of speaking, the ability to tie all these things with various characters. And I think just to celebrate my career and the stage where I’m in, I made one of the key characters there a journalist, who was going to uncover some of those stories,” she said. “My book is actually a mental health book, because I played with all the mental dysfunction that Nigerians are exposed to. I always hear Lagos is a very traumatized city. I see it in the faces of people and I ask myself everyday how you people cope here. I realized there’s a general theme for all of us in Nigeria which is that we are a highly traumatized society. The caste system is an example of a very traumatized people who feel the need to demean another person to show their own superiority.
“There was also the Osu ideology where people were dedicated to the gods and they served the gods. Those were ancient practices and there’s nothing wrong with that; it’s just that because of the way we shroud information in African society. Because they were not decoded, it was so easy to misunderstand what the Osu caste stood for. The Delta State Ministry of Education has approved this book as a literature text for students, and why I’m happy about it is because we are starting what is called a national reading competition (using Distortion).”
Umukoro argued that her novel is designed to reset society from its inherent distortion couched in misogynistic traditions that demean women, noting, “One of the aims of my novel Distortion is to amplify some of these hidden conversations. The case of a woman forced to drink the bathwater of her husband’s corpse is captured in this book. That’s a distortion. You will never see any tradition that tells a man to do the same thing. How do we have a society where we feel that is normal? And we call it tradition? That’s a mental disembowelment of another human being. None of us will want it for our sister or daughter. So, why do we think the wife is perceived as somebody lower in the social order in a family?
“So, part of Distortion is to question every belief system we have; to retell our narrative, because we are not doing that enough as Africans. One of the reasons that influenced the national reading competition is that we interviewed a number of teenagers, and for every 50, only one by mistake, has read a book written by an African author, or even a Nigerian author. We have the data. When you ask them which do you know of, they can’t answer, and then one finally says, ‘Chinua Achebe.’ When you ask what he knows about Chinua Achebe, she can’t remember anything about the book.
“That tells us that we have not made our children appreciate our own stories. They told me that they read only foreign literature. How can we have over 200 million people, and children who make 70 per cent of that population are reading foreign literature, and they’re proud to beat their chest? Is that not a distortion? When they came and they conquered, and they destroyed us, what they did effectively was to shattered our own self-esteem, and what continues to happen is that we too are perpetuating it. It’s often said that the person who cries against racism the loudest, if given the chance, when they have opportunities and privileges, they would do worse than the people they first condemned. May we not be a distorted people!”
